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MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Thursday, 16 January 2020
'There is no link': the climate doubters within Scott Morrison's government
George Christensen and Craig Kelly. Government MPs say Kelly has been encouraged to once again avoid interviews.
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP
The science minister, Karen Andrews, has said it’s “time for everyone to move on” from ideological debates on climate change.
“Every second that we spend discussing if climate change is real is a
second we don’t spend addressing these issues,” she told Nine
Newspapers. “Let’s move on and get over this.”
Yet the seconds members of her party have spent denying the climate
emergency and its impacts not only stretch into hours, they have
derailed Australia’s attempts at a coordinated response for a decade.
The bushfire crisis has led to a change in language on climate change and its impact on natural disasters among the Coalition,
with the prime minister, Scott Morrison, claiming the government he
leads “has always made that connection and that has never been in
dispute”.
Except it has.
Morrison may have signalled his pivot to “evolving” his government’s
climate policy – a notion Andrews picked up with a call to “adapt and
mitigate” the impact of the changes – but there are many within the
party room who continue to openly doubt the science.
An analysis of the social media postings on public Facebook and
Twitter pages by federal Liberal and National members of federal
parliament show most MPs who posted about the fires throughout the
season were either mentioning places to donate, or passing on emergency
services information.
But doubters continue to exist within the government. Asked on
Wednesday about his message to backbenchers who continue to dispute the
science, Morrison said “every member of Parliament ... has a right to
speak their mind.”
Here’s what MPs have been saying. Craig Kelly
A
serial and constant denier of climate change, the New South Wales MP
most recently made international headlines when he called a British
meteorologist an “ignorant pommie weather girl” after openly denying the
existence of climate change.
“Well firstly there is no link, the facts that cause the fires are
the drought and the drying of the environment and on this our climate
scientists down here have been very clear and they have said that there
is no link between drought and climate change.”
Kelly doubled down on his comments in an interview with Piers Morgan in the midst of the bushfire crisis.
Just hours after Andrews’ comments, Kelly was back on Facebook
denying Australia could do anything in terms of lowering emissions
which “will have any measurable effect on global temperatures, sea
levels or bad weather.”
‘’GREAT CHANGES HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN THE CLIMATE OF AUSTRALIA, ALL TESTIMONIES SATISFACTORILY PROVE’’.
No one ‘’denies’’ the climate is changing. It always has and always will.
The only ‘’deniers’’ are those who deny the fact that nothing we do in
Australia to ‘’reduce emissions’’, be it; closing down coal & gas
fired power stations, banning 4WDs, reducing air travel, closing mining
operations, giving up mobile phones, culling the dairy & beef herds,
stopping cement manufactur... See more
He may have to limit his views to his social media though. Government
MPs say Kelly has been encouraged to once again avoid interviews – he
was previously stopped from appearing on the ABC’s Q&A program
before the 2019 election campaign.
George Christensen
The Queensland MP continues to point to debunked and false theories
that arson is to blame for the majority of blazes this summer. He also
openly and consistently disputes the link between climate change and
worsening disasters and “hat tips” Kelly for his work in this space,
linking to Kelly’s posts.
Spent a bit of time yesterday digging around on the public pages of Liberal and National MPs to see what they've been saying during the fires. The overwhelming majority are either posting useful donation/emergency info or not posting. Then there's these two.
Matt Canavan
Unashamedly pro-coal, the Queensland senator declared it had been
“such an honour to represent the Australian mining sector” when he
briefly stepped down from the ministry, during the section 44
constitutional issues which weighed down the previous parliament.
While agreeing that Australia should reduce carbon emissions, he also
told the ABC on 12 December “what I don’t agree with is that doing so
in Australia would significantly or at all reduce bushfire risk.”
“I
don’t think you can at all, at this stage, link individual events to
particular outcomes. The fires have not started due to climate change”.
Barnaby Joyce
After leading the charge against the carbon price, Joyce has since
acknowledged climate change is real and happening. Yet he continues to
float debunked theories.
“There are a range of things that affect the climate and, on a global
scale, you should be part of it, and acknowledge it would have an
effect and I acknowledge that there are other issues as well,” he told
Sky News on 11 November.
“There’s just the oscillation of the seasons. There’s a change in the magnetic field of the sun.”
A
sea wall being built 7000 years ago to deal with rising sea levels
isn’t surprising. The earth has been warming for around 12,000 years -
the time period is known as the Holocene. Around 7,000 years could tie
up with the Holocene highstand where sea levels rose quite dramatically.
Not sure of the reason why but to the best of my knowledge it wasn’t due to coal powered fire stations.
Sam McMahon
The NT senator insists it is the Greens’ agenda which led “to these horrible fires”.
At a point in time when we are witnessing first hand the catastrophic loss of an estimated one billion animals, the Greens still push their ridiculous agenda. The same one that lead to these horrible fires. https://twitter.com/theoverlandlad/status/1216095180996014082 …
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